This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival
material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are
physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available
through the World Wide Web. See the
Duplication Policy section for more information.

Jacques Barzun, professor and critic, and Wendell Hertig Taylor, a retired scientist,
were life-long friends and enthusiastic readers, critics, and collectors of detective
fiction. The collection includes correspondence, notes, and typed drafts concerning
A Catalogue of Crime and
Fifty Classics of Crime, both edited by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor.

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants,
as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor Papers #12013,
Rare Book Literary and Historical Papers, The Wilson Library, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Transferred from the Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill in December 1983.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or
confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy
laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. §
132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of
State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.).
Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to
identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent
of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under
common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's
private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable
person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no
responsibility.

The following terms from
Library of Congress Subject
Headings
suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the
entire collection; the terms do
not usually represent
discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or
items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's
online catalog.

Jacques Barzun, professor and critic, and Wendell Hertig Taylor, a retired scientist,
were life long friends and enthusiastic readers, critics, and collectors of detective
fiction. In the early 1970s, they began donating many of their books to the Rare Book
Room of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In appreciation, the library
renamed its mystery collection "The Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor Collection of Crime and Detection."

Barzun and Taylor compiled and edited
A Catalogue of Crime, a reference guide to detective stories. They sent typed drafts of the book, along
with related materials, to the Rare Book Collection which transferred them to the
Southern Historical Collection in 1983.

Most of these items are letters, notes, and typed drafts of Barzun and Taylor's
A Catalogue of Crime, and the supplements to it that appeared in Barzun's
The Armchair Detective. There are also four detective stories and articles written by Wendell Hertig Taylor
and Louise Hertig Taylor in the 1920s, and typed notes for
Fifty Classics of Crime, a series of re issued noteworthy mysteries, which Barzun and Taylor edited.